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@moth
Ok, and i was probably reacting more to the annoying echoes of another argument from elsewhere than anything you actually said: the 'don't worry about running out and just trust the market' angle.
Helium is increasingly useful, often not easily substitutable, the world has a finite reserve, which we're draining not in response to economic demand for helium but rather demand for natural gas and mostly just ditching the helium irrecoverably into the atmosphere. Yes the US government has screwed the market, but it would be pretty screwed anyway. The long-term rational thing to do would be harvest helium from natural gas extraction well beyond current economic demand and store it for the coming centuries. Markets just don't work on those time-scales.
Yes we won't completely run out of helium, but running out of cheap helium will still be pretty bad. There'll be lots of cool stuff which just wont be economically possible any more.